02-25-2021, 02:01 AM
choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned
He doesn’t return to Taiga often.
The land of his birth no longer holds the comfort that it once had. He looks back on his childhood and thinks how foolish he had been to wish to be somewhere else, or someone else. A plain boy born to a family of shadows, he had stood out more than he liked. Different eyes, different skin, no abilities — he convinced himself he was a disappointment. It did not matter that he had been born to parents completely and wholly in love with each other; it did not matter that any child born between the two of them would be considered perfect. He watched as his siblings were born, and while he loved them—still loves them—he never could quite shake the sorrow every time one of them displayed a skill for bending shadows and he had nothing.
What a cruel twist of fate that he would be turned into not just a shadow, but something else entirely.
He may be made of shadows, but he was not made of the same darkness as his father. There was something malicious to the magic that took root inside of him, something sinister at the core of him that he constantly warred against. Try as he might to seclude himself, there was only so long he could go before the cravings could no longer be ignored.
He needed them; he needed all of them.
He needed their sorrow and their anger, their fear and despair.
That beast inside of him was a greedy, gluttonous thing, and he knew that no matter what he did, it would never be sated. The moment he had realized that had been when the hopelessness truly set in. That realization that this endless starving and insanity was it for the rest of his life.
From the cloak of darkness and behind the thick of trees he watches her. She is familiar, though he doesn't know her name, or who she is. She is just someone that he has seen growing up in Taiga, and then again on his visits back (he liked to linger on the outskirts, pressing against the shadow curtain Ether often kept wrapped around his family; just close enough to touch their darkness but not actually interrupt it).
And usually, he is more careful to keep his distance and remain undetected, but today, he slips. He is not sure if it was truly on accident—he did not often make mistakes like that—or if a part of him was hoping she would notice the mass of dark that followed her. She says hello, and her voice is soft, like sunlight, and he almost disappears again. Instead, he steps from around the thick redwood that had been hiding the glow of his red eyes from her, though in this eternal black it is nearly impossible to discern the shape of his shadows from everything else. “Sorry if I disturbed you,” is all he says, his voice a hushed sound in the dark.
The land of his birth no longer holds the comfort that it once had. He looks back on his childhood and thinks how foolish he had been to wish to be somewhere else, or someone else. A plain boy born to a family of shadows, he had stood out more than he liked. Different eyes, different skin, no abilities — he convinced himself he was a disappointment. It did not matter that he had been born to parents completely and wholly in love with each other; it did not matter that any child born between the two of them would be considered perfect. He watched as his siblings were born, and while he loved them—still loves them—he never could quite shake the sorrow every time one of them displayed a skill for bending shadows and he had nothing.
What a cruel twist of fate that he would be turned into not just a shadow, but something else entirely.
He may be made of shadows, but he was not made of the same darkness as his father. There was something malicious to the magic that took root inside of him, something sinister at the core of him that he constantly warred against. Try as he might to seclude himself, there was only so long he could go before the cravings could no longer be ignored.
He needed them; he needed all of them.
He needed their sorrow and their anger, their fear and despair.
That beast inside of him was a greedy, gluttonous thing, and he knew that no matter what he did, it would never be sated. The moment he had realized that had been when the hopelessness truly set in. That realization that this endless starving and insanity was it for the rest of his life.
From the cloak of darkness and behind the thick of trees he watches her. She is familiar, though he doesn't know her name, or who she is. She is just someone that he has seen growing up in Taiga, and then again on his visits back (he liked to linger on the outskirts, pressing against the shadow curtain Ether often kept wrapped around his family; just close enough to touch their darkness but not actually interrupt it).
And usually, he is more careful to keep his distance and remain undetected, but today, he slips. He is not sure if it was truly on accident—he did not often make mistakes like that—or if a part of him was hoping she would notice the mass of dark that followed her. She says hello, and her voice is soft, like sunlight, and he almost disappears again. Instead, he steps from around the thick redwood that had been hiding the glow of his red eyes from her, though in this eternal black it is nearly impossible to discern the shape of his shadows from everything else. “Sorry if I disturbed you,” is all he says, his voice a hushed sound in the dark.
torryn
@[lilliana]